It was as if he was outside himself, watching from miles in the air as his body lashed out. Swan took to the air and bolted down the hall in the direction of their rooms. Is she getting Shift out? He tried to exert control over himself but the raging war of personalities batted him aside. He was there, for the ride, and there watching from a distance. It was confusing and disorienting and he wanted it to stop! Panic rode up but he tamped it down. Floating several inches above the floor, he drifted into the hall past the ruins of the door. Swan and Shift spilled into the hall, coming out of his room. He looked bewildered and her mouth was moving too fast for him to read from this distance. It angered something inside him and a ball of energy lashed out, howling down the hall and striking Swan in the chest. She took the second fall of the evening as she shattered the plate glass window that looked out onto the lamp lit parking lot.
John winced and teleported. He was outside now, standing over the shredded back of Swan's top. She was bleeding and there were shards of glass in her back. Dark arms encircled his neck and he bucked to get the offender off. Shift's voice filtered to his ear. "PSION, WHAT ARE YOU DOING! STOP!" John looked and Swan was pinned against the nearest street lamp, grappling for a hold on invisible hands on her throat. Sirens pierced the strange silence and the psionic released Swan. Reaching back, the feral grabbed Shift by his shirt and flung him across the parking lot. He bounced once and came to a halt near a black SUV, limp. Swan was picking herself up off the asphalt as the screech of tires surrounded him. The feral snarled, and the psionic lashed out. Police cars spun across the lot in a squeal of rubber and the crunch of metal. A smirk played across his face, out of place among the tears streaming down John's face. Bullets whined through the air. One, two, three struck him and sent him in a whirl to the ground. He caught himself on his hands, spat blood and the feral grinned out of John's face. The holes were closing as rapidly; faster even, than the bullets being pumped into his body. John was thankful the feral he'd contacted had had a regenerative ability that sped up the faster the damage was dealt. The feral stood, grinning like a lunatic as it advanced on the nearest uniform. She fired repeatedly until her finger was sending the hammer against an empty chamber. Terror filled her amber eyes and a force like a freight train barreled over him. John felt himself being jostled between four thick churning legs and when he came out of the roll he was staring down a rhinoceros with nostrils flared, Shift? Neat trick; the teleported moved, he was on Shift's back. The psion and the feral worked in tandem, drawing the bladeless hilt from his belt and channeling the energies through it to create the semi-transparent blade of energy. He raised the blade up, grip reversed, and Shift changed. A bull bucked him and he was airborne. More gunfire followed him as he hit with an impact that sent the hilt clattering across the parking lot. Cursing, he felt his insides shifting, healing the internal injuries and rejecting the bullets that were still being pumped into his body. Strong, slender, hands grabbed him by his neck and he was airborne again. Cursing, he looked up and cloned himself. Four John's attacked Swan in the air. Two arms were required to beat off the attacks so she let him go. He plummeted to the ground and as he hit, he phased. He went subterranean; his hearing sent the confusion in the police's voices straight to his brain. Tears were still streaming down John's face as he burst through the asphalt. Arms and hands went to work. He snapped the neck of one uniform, ripped the arm off another and threw it with such a force that it knocked several more uniforms backward onto their butts. The feral launched an attack, peppering the patrol cars with pure energy bullets. They all dove for cover. Two of his clones had broken off and were grappling with Shift as he went from animal form to animal form, to human form. The teleporter concentrated through the cloner and all five John's went into transit. The reappeared as a united front; fire and ice lanced outward, joined with psionic lashes of telekinetic energy and pure bursts of energy. The cops were firing again, from behind the cover of their vehicles. He didn't see Shift or Swan, part of him was concerned, the feral, and John was worried about their safety. His eyes, he knew, were glowing by now. He knew he had to look ferocious time five. The uniforms were putting up a valiant effort to take him down, John hoped and prayed they would but he knew he could live through the nuclear wash of a venting reactor…if the world ended tomorrow in a nuclear war, he, Wolverine, and a perhaps a handful of other mutants would be the only ones left standing. He wanted it, prayed desperately for it to end, but it wouldn't. It couldn't. The buzzing was getting worse; John knew he was losing himself to the multiple personalities battling within him for dominance just as they fought the local forces as a team. Something hit him again and he was down. Hurt, hurt enough that he had to recall the clones. They converged and he struggled back to a kneeling position. The feral howled and grinned furiously, blood painted his lips and chin as it growled a challenge at the police. John looked at himself, he was covered with blood. His clothes were torn tattered, hanging in shredded rags about his shoulders and waist. The psion lashed out again, police cars went somersaulting into the air as it asserted its dominance over the others. John knew he was going to the place he'd kept them locked away together. Had that been his first folly? Keeping them all together? He should have locked them away separately. Would that have made a difference? The psion cackled as it took control, then someone else rose like a devil out of the fires of hell. John screamed the other personalities shifted uncomfortably, as Hassan rose in his consciousness. No, no, no! He's dead! No, he wouldn't let Hassan have his body, never, never! John started to fight but he was weak; blood loss, fatigue from the fight, and the ravages of so many mutations running through him all at once. John the body would live, John the soul would die. He struggled, fighting through the clawing, steel fingered hands, of the personalities. Fighting for air, fighting for daylight, fighting to live; Hassan turned to him and smiled, a pleased little smile that John hated. He wanted to tear it off Hassan's smug face. He reached out to do it but another arm, another hand, another face, another body, pressed him down, down, down into the deep abyss that was his mind. John screamed at the press of ethereal bodies. He was no longer paying attention to what he was doing, but he was aware of new fires burning, new bodies moaning, new sirens approaching. Ice lashed out like a frozen angel of death, energy burned like electricity. He no longer even knew what he was doing; he just wanted to force Hassan out of the top seat! Something hit him again, and he was on his back. A nearly weightless form with too strong hands held him down; he prepared to destroy whoever dared stop him when a face filtered through it all. John knew that face…that face was calling to him, pleading with him to come back to them. The other personalities seemed perplexed, Hassan seemed afraid, John used that to claw his way out of the darkness. It was Swan? The gunfire had ceased, the fires still crackled softly. Boots echoed as firefighters scurried to put them out before they could spread. John looked up at Swan through his own eyes again, bloodshot and fuzzy from the tears. Hassan clawed at his back, the other personalities were clawing at whatever they could get their hands. What was Swan doing here? Another presence…immediate and yet far away suddenly invaded his mind. The image of a bald man with intense dark blue eyes swam before his vision and he felt something, sharp but painless, snap inside his head. Darkness descended as surely as a light switch pitching a windowless room into nothingness and John knew peace…
